ABOUT THIS BOOK

The geography of Chicago is central to its history and to its success as the nation’s now third largest metropolitan area. The first geography of the Windy City in more than fifty years, Chicago: A Geography of the City and Its Region is a topical and chronological analysis of the area that both considers the city’s historical geography and anticipates its future trends.

Renowned geographer John C. Hudson leaves no aspect unexplored in this ambitious and peerless book. Beginning with an overview of metropolitan Chicago, Hudson describes how the city has served as a model to social scientists and examines its unique neighborhoods and communities from the perspectives of Chicagoans themselves. A thorough description of the physical geography of the region introduces a series of studies in historical geography that consider the origins of the city and its early development through to its present state, paying particular attention to race, ethnicity, and suburbanization, as well as commuting patterns, neighborhood change, and patterns of income distribution. Chicago concludes with a comparison of the balanced geography that prevailed in the early twentieth century with the skewed pattern of sectoral imbalances that exists today.

Supplemented with more than one hundred maps that illustrate the evolution of Chicago over time and sixty-four black-and-white and color photographs that capture iconic images of the city’s landscapes and its people, Chicago beautifully synthesizes the city’s social and economic strata with geographical features to provide an authoritative guide to modern Chicagoland.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY

John C. Hudson is director of the geography program and environmental sciences program at Northwestern University. Among his books are Plains Country Towns, Making the Corn Belt,and Across This Land: A Regional Geography of the United States and Canada.

REVIEWS

"A well-written and well-produced book."

— Choice

"This monograph joins a relatively small group of publications that successfully capture the sense of history and place of a metropolitan region in a manner accessible to a general audience while providing sufficient detail to satisfy the needs of most academic readers. . . . An outstanding work of scholarship and literature. . . . [Hudson] has set an example to which we all might aspire; integrating visual images, maps, history, physical, social and economic geography into a tapestry that at once helps the reader understand where things are, where they may be going, and where they have been."

— Russell S. Kirby, Cartographic Perspectives

"A very comprehensive urban geography of Chicago. In light of the recent debates concerning which cities are most reflective of contemporary urban processes, Hudson's book is a must read for the urban studies community."

— Richard Greene, Professional Geographer

TABLE OF CONTENTS

List of Figures
Acknowledgements

Part I. Introduction
Chapter 1. Chicago and It's Region
Chapter 2. The Chicago Model
Chapter 3. Chicago's Neighborhoods

Part II. Physical Geography
Chapter 4. Chicago's Climate
Chapter 5. Chicago's Landforms
Chapter 6. River Basins and Drainage

Part III. Historical Patterns
Chapter 7. Origins of the City
Chapter 8. Early Development
Chapter 9. Southward Expansion

Part IV. The Growing City
Chapter 10. Models and Plans
Chapter 11. Populating and Repopulating the City
Chapter 12. Transportation and Industry

Part V. The Changing City
Chapter 13. The Migration Decades
Chapter 14. Suburban Expansion
Chapter 15. Changing Ethnic Patterns

Part VI. Current Trends
Chapter 16. Commuting to Work
Chapter 17. Age and Neighborhood Change
Chapter 18. Income Distribution

Part VII. Conclusion
Chapter 19. The Sector Model Revisited

References and Selected Readings
Books in the Series
Index
About the Author